insider trading

A Dallas federal jury found this afternoon that billionaire Mark Cuban did not commit insider trading.

After nearly four hours of deliberations, a jury of seven women and two men cleared Cuban on all counts, saying the government did not prove that the Dallas Mavericks owner had received confidential information from the CEO of mamma.com.

The Securities and Exchange Commission had accused Cuban of using confidential information to dump his shares of mamma.com and avoid losing $750,000.

Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban is in federal court in Dallas, telling jurors about calls and emails he sent to the CEO of an Internet firm shortly before he sold all his shares in the company. Cuban’s lawyers say there was no privileged information in the conversation.

The Securities and Exchange Commission says Cuban used confidential information from a phone call with the CEO of mamma.com about plans to sell more public shares of the company.

Prosecutors say that Cuban immediately sold his 600,000 shares to avoid losing $750,000. The additional stock sale would have diluted Cuban’s existing stock value and reduced his 6 percent ownership in the company.